MARCOLINI FRANCESCO Le Ingeniose Sorti intitulate Giardin

Sale 2140 - Lot 73

Price Realized: $ 5,520

?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price

Estimate: $ 4,000 - $ 6,000

MARCOLINI, FRANCESCO. Le Ingeniose Sorti . . . intitulate Giardino di Pensieri . . . Novamente Ristampate. Large woodcut of "garden of thinkers" on title by Giovanni Porta, full-page portrait of Marcolini on verso; 50 woodcut illustrations of abstract qualities, virtues, and vices, and 50 of ancient Greek philosophers; small woodcuts of playing cards throughout; colophon and printer's woodcut device within large woodcut cartouche on last page. 157, [1] pages. Folio, 298x202 mm, 19th-century 1/4 morocco gilt, joints worn, front hinge cracked; marginal soiling through much of volume, preliminaries and last several leaves remargined with slight text loss on A3, a few other marginal repairs occasionally affecting text, scattered dark stains. Later engraved portrait of Porta tipped to front flyleaf. (Venice: Francesco Marcolini, July 1550)

Set Alert for Similar Items

Additional Details

Second edition of an elaborate and profusely illustrated 1540 treatise on the use of playing cards for fortune-telling and divination, enabling one to find the answer to 13 questions for men (e. g., is it better to choose a beautiful woman or an ugly one? how many women should he have?), 13 for women (will she get what she desires? will she have a boy or girl? should she change lovers?), and 24 miscellaneous ones (does the courtesan have syphilis?). The pages associated with qualities, virtues, and vices contain instructions for choosing a series of cards that will lead to the gnomic answers (not verified by Swann) on the pages associated with ancient philosophers. Hargrave, A History of Playing Cards, pages 242-43; Harvard/Mortimer-Italian 280.